China Orders Tesla to Recall Nearly 3 Million Cars Over Hidden Door Handles, Largest Recall in the Country's History

China's State Administration for Market Regulation announced Friday, August 21, that Tesla must recall 2,975,910 vehicles, its largest recall ever in any market, over hidden emergency door releases that occupants can't find or operate after a crash.

The recall covers 973,156 domestically built Model 3s, 1,956,713 domestically built Model Ys, plus 35,590 imported Model 3s, 8,328 imported Model Xs, and 2,123 imported Model Ss, according to SAMR's filing. Tesla also separately recalled 2.74 million China-made Model 3 and Model Y vehicles for a driver-monitoring system defect that fails to warn distracted drivers, according to Forbes.

Eight other companies filed recalls the same day for the identical door-handle problem: Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Geely (including its Zeekr and Lynk & Co. brands), Chery, Dongfeng, BAIC BluePark, and FAW Hongqi, according to Electrek and CarNewsChina. Combined, roughly 4.27 million vehicles are affected, making this China's broadest coordinated auto safety action and its largest recall campaign to date, according to insurancejournal and Li Yanwei, an adviser to the China Automobile Dealers Association.

Xiaomi is recalling 390,435 SU7 sedans. Leapmotor is recalling 371,200 vehicles. Zeekr is recalling 92,658 units. Smaller batches come from BAIC BluePark (46,860), Dongfeng (53,452), and FAW Hongqi (4,035), according to CarNewsChina's breakdown of the SAMR filings.

SAMR's concern is not the flush exterior handles Tesla popularized. The issue is the interior mechanical backup release, the manual lever meant to work when a car loses electrical power. Regulators say the color of these releases blends in with interior trim, making them hard to spot in a crisis, according to Electrek.

China's new national standard, the "Technical Requirements for Automobile Door Handle Safety," will require internal handles to be clearly visible and positioned within 300 millimeters of door edges once it takes effect in January 2027, according to CarNewsChina. External handles will need mechanical release functionality too. That standard isn't in force yet, but automakers are moving now.

The fix for most companies, including Tesla, is not a hardware redesign. It's warning labels installed free of charge plus an over-the-air software update that automatically lowers windows after a collision to help occupants escape, according to SCMP and the SAMR statement. Tesla's recall takes effect September 25, 2026.

The trigger was a string of incidents where people got trapped in cars that lost power after a crash. SCMP cited a fatal incident last year where bystanders couldn't open a burning car's doors to reach the driver. Engadget specifically referenced a fatal Xiaomi sedan crash where rescuers were unable to free a trapped driver.

Bloomberg News has documented at least 15 deaths across a dozen incidents involving Tesla vehicles specifically, where occupants or rescuers couldn't open doors after a crash and fire, according to insurancejournal. Bloomberg also reported that Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed for electric door designs even after internal safety concerns were raised, though that reporting predates this recall and isn't something Tesla has publicly confirmed in these sources.

China became the first country to ban concealed EV door handles when it finalized that rule in February, according to TechCrunch and SCMP.